Reflections on the past

For expert opinion, news updates and future webcasts from the courts next year, keep a close eye on the Cambodia Tribunal Monitor. It currently hosts two documentary films produced by DC-Cam. Each film chronicles the plight of individuals who lived under the Khmer Rouge regime. The films are The Khmer Rouge Rice Fields: The Story of Rape Survivor Tang Kim (produced in 2004 by Youk Chhang and Rachana Phat) and Behind the Walls of S-21 : Oral Histories from Tuol Sleng Prison (produced in 2007 by Youk Chhang and Doug Kass). See both films here.

A new book - Reflections of a Khmer Soul - is a lyrical journey of self-acceptance as the author, Navy Phim (right), questions and comes to terms with the Killing Fields and other genocides. This journey involves traveling inside oneself and to a distant past to discuss what it means to be Khmer, a hyphenated American, and different misconceptions about Cambodians and Cambodia, a place that still haunts and inspires her. I've blogged Navy's book before but you can also keep up to date with her news at her blog, here. I'm looking forward to getting hold of a copy of her book myself.

A recent article in the New Jersey Times by N J DeVico focuses on the story of Arn Chorn-Pond, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, who has also been featured on my blog in the past. To read more, click here. Pond survived and went onto co-found Children of War, an organization that elicited dialogue among young people of warring countriesand then founded, Cambodian Living Arts, about 10 years ago. Link: cambodianliving arts.

The Walrus, Canada's Magazine of the year, has reproduced an article from October last year titled Bombs Over Cambodia, in which Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan present new information revealing that Cambodia was bombed far more heavily than previously believed, by the United States between 1964 and 1975. Read the article, here.